


Love of a Gun

by Nomanono



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gun Kink, High Stakes, Legacy: A Victurio Anthology, M/M, Secret Organizations, Spies & Secret Agents, You Just Have To Survive, Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 22:42:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17395067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nomanono/pseuds/Nomanono
Summary: They say joining the Agency is the ultimate sacrifice. Who you are, what you’ve done, the people you knew and loved: it all ends. The program is a seven year stint through hell, Agents of all ages trying to pay their time and make it to the other side. If you somehow survive, you get everything back and better. Agency graduation is rebirth. You become a Phoenix.But there’s only ever been one Phoenix, and now the Agency needs another.





	Love of a Gun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foxfireflamequeen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxfireflamequeen/gifts).



> You can blame foxy for all of this. This is really just 7.5k of story to justify getting throat-fucked by a gun. Do I apologize for this? Unsure.

_They say joining the Agency is the ultimate sacrifice. Who you are, what you’ve done, the people you knew and loved: it all ends. The program is a seven year stint through hell, Agents of all ages trying to pay their time and make it to the other side. If you somehow survive, you get everything back and better. Agency graduation is rebirth. You become a Phoenix._

_But there’s only ever been one Phoenix, and now the Agency needs another. ___

_  
___  


____

—

Three years and Victor still couldn’t leave his apartment without his gun, not even for something as simple as grocery shopping. He kept his hand in his long coat pocket, resting against the familiar weight at his hip, as he crossed the chipping white lines of the parking lot. His head bowed against the lingering morning chill trying to weasel under his scarf. His pinky twitched on instinct as someone called out behind him.

“Sir! Sir, you dropped this!”

Three years, but he’d never forget the Agency’s call codes. He flashed back to mnemonology, to months spent in claustrophobic sterile rooms with microphones repeating codes again, and again, and again.

Sir, you dropped this! He remembered it so clearly, but he still prayed, for a split second, that it was just an ordinary citizen, that he’d simply misplaced his wallet. Instead, he found himself face to face with an older woman holding out two slips of paper no bigger than business cards.

To anyone else it looked perfectly benign. A grocery list written in quick, legible script—potatoes, leek, pepper—and a coupon for 20% off, expired three months ago.

“It’s not mine, but I’ll take the coupon,” Victor said, words casual despite the mantra-like dedication with which he’d memorized them a decade ago. How many times had he said that into the microphone?

To anyone else it looked perfectly benign. To Victor, the whole world shifted beneath his feet.

The Agency wanted him back.

—

The coupon fluttered with every beat of Victor’s shoes on the treadmill. It watched from the console as Victor ticked past the fifteen kilometer mark, nothing but a handtowel at his neck to catch the sweat. Some habits were unshakeable.

People assumed that if you graduated, you’d get your life back, but it was never that simple. Your childhood home didn’t feel the same after seven years of slipping on new faces like clothes, murdering whoever the Agency labeled ‘target’—using bullets if you were lucky, bare hands if you weren’t. Victor’s friends thought he was dead, and even when he tracked them down—the Agency warned him against it—they’d gotten married, had children, were entirely different.

His grandmother was dead. The last words he’d said to her were, “I’ll make you proud.”

It was easier for Victor, thinking about it as if it had happened to someone else. The Agency said if you survive seven years you get to go back; they never said the world would move on without you. Maybe it was Victor’s fault for harboring foolish hopes.

He’d moved downtown after two months: into a posh, aseptic apartment. He couldn’t stand the eeriness of home and couldn’t bear the quiet of the country. Here, at least, he had height at night and a crowd for camouflage during the day. With the Agency’s funds, he’d bought out the top floor of a tall complex, created his own private haven with windows plated in reflective, heat diffusing film. From here, he could see the entire city sprawled around him, autonomous apes threading between buildings below like ants. Whenever he picked one out from the crowd, his first thought was how, and how quickly, he could incapacitate them.

After twenty kilometers Victor stepped off the treadmill, running his towel through his hair and sitting on the leather edge of his couch while his legs trembled. At the Agency he would have gone directly into weights, but now he allowed himself a few minutes rest between.

He didn’t have to go back. He’d served his time. He’d been the first—and only—Agent to survive. His life was his own: his empty house, his paranoid path, his waking nightmares.

The air conditioner kicked on and the coupon blew off the console, landing between the golden soles of Victor’s shoes with all the authority his Director ever had.

Who was he kidding? He’d never had a choice.

—

The tickets appeared in his PO box the next morning. Congratulations! You’re the lucky winner of an all-expenses-paid vacation to mythical Mykonos. Victor nestled the deconstructed components of his gun amongst brightly colored tropical shirts in an old gym bag and dressed down to match, throwing back enough vodka to make his cheeks red as he entered the airport all jollity and fool.

He looked just like any other pre-gaming tourist.

Hunkered in a bathroom stall Victor reassembled the pieces, 45 seconds flat. The Agency would have taken him out of the field for that. He inspected the gold-lipped muzzle, his signature, but even the black practically glowed. He must have cleaned his gun a hundred times since he left, even though he hadn’t fired it once.

Victor sat in the stall, a hundred lifeless eyes reflecting back along the barrel, ghosts of lives he’d altered or ended. One of the older Agents, when Victor first joined, said he’d remember every person he killed, but that was a lie. Victor had killed too many, too quickly—some mere flashes of light and shadow—to know, much less remember them. 

A grunt and a splash echoed from two stalls down. Victor shuffled the gun away, flushed, and left to catch his flight.

—

After the first leg of his travels, Victor abandoned his promised vacation and left the terminal in Geneva, heading through customs with the same ID referenced on his flight tickets—one of seven Victor had full personas for, of twenty-two total. A Swiss passport.

“Welcome home,” the customs agent said. Victor hadn’t been to Switzerland in five years, four months, and two weeks, but according to his passport stamps he’d lived in an apartment outside Bern, happily, the entire time.

Amongst the chauffeurs waiting outside the arrival gates was a black-capped man with a tablet displaying ‘Mykonos’. Victor greeted him in effortless Swiss German, exactly the sentence he was supposed to say. The driver ticked his chin down in acknowledgment, shook Victor’s hand, and led him to a black-windowed car.

Once, many years ago, Victor’s driver had asked if he wanted a bottle of water. The courtesy had taken Victor by surprise. He remembered it in marked clarity, yet now it seemed like another lifetime—aeons ago, before his final mission. Before his freedom.

Now the driver just handed Victor the pill. Victor stared at it in his palm: a simple white capsule, completely unmarked.

“Prost,” Victor said, lifting the pill to the driver. He threw it back and welcomed the black.

—

Waking up at the Agency was always disorienting.

Victor’s heart stuttered, startling him into a fuzzy-edged world. When he sat up he found himself naked on a padded bed, personal effects collected on a steel table nearby. His gun was in pieces, and the pile of folded clothes was not his own. His vision swam as he stood, the whole world sloshing at the sides like liquid swirled in a cup. His hand caught the edge of the bed, just for a split second.

There was little else in the room, its walls concrete with a strip of black glass from waist high to over Victor’s head, interrupted only by a metal door with no hinge or handle. Victor casually flipped off the supervisors he knew watched behind the one-way windows. He’d earned that, becoming a Phoenix. At the center of the room was a chrome drain, but beyond that, nothing: no furniture, no decorations, not even a noteworthy crack in the concrete.

Just like Victor remembered. Sterility to the point of numbness. Even the air felt thick and cottony in Victor’s ears, tasted ionic from constant recycling. It was many things: pressure that meant they were deep underground, the barely perceptible buzz of noise cancellation. Victor used to whisper a prayer, right before he went to bed, just to make sure he could still hear himself.

The dizziness ebbed. Victor pissed into the drain, then put together his gun—42 seconds, better—and finally got dressed, using the dark glass for his mirror. Black, form-fitting leggings stuck to his calves and the equally form-fitting shirt bore a white phoenix on the breast pocket, right where his year icon used to be.

He would have gone naked instead of donning an Agency uniform, but nothing was worse than the emptiness where his gun ought to be, and his bare hips didn’t have a harness.

“I’m ready,” Victor spoke. It sounded muted, like he was muzzled with felt.

The door slid sideways, into the wall, and the Director stepped inside: “Welcome home, Vitya.”

—

The Director’s hair fell not quite to his shoulders, kept long as if to compensate for the glaring baldness atop his skull. Wrinkles bunched under his eyes and framed his scowl, mouth a flat line of permanent disapproval.

And yet.

He said ‘Welcome home’ and it felt far truer than anything Victor felt for his St. Petersburg loft. His one-way windows had never felt like home. His bed had never felt like home. His rooftop garden—to help him relax—had never felt like home. But this stale air, fluorescent-lit concrete, and constant surveillance?

It was familiar, and there were people here who cared about him, even if only as a highly valuable international asset. No one in St. Petersburg even knew him, save perhaps the evening security guard, or the elderly woman who worked the grocery deli. In St. Petersburg, Victor had cultivated his anonymity. Here, he was a legend. 

What was home, anyway, beside familiarity and care? 

He hated them for that.

“Yakov,” Victor said instead, keeping his voice as flat as Yakov’s smile.

Yakov snorted. “You haven’t changed.”

“No? You’ve lost more hair,” Victor nodded to the Director’s scalp.

“Still so irreverent.”

“Still alive.”

“Correlation, not causation,” Yakov clipped.

Victor’s jaw clicked. He couldn’t hear it through the thick silence of the air, only the sound traveling through his bones. Half real. Half alive. “You summoned me. I’m here.”

“Yes,” Yakov agreed. “Follow me.”

—

Agency halls all looked the same, identical passages branching at acute angles so no one could rely on cardinal navigation. Steel door, steel door, steel door, steel door. It was an impossible labyrinth, right up until Victor felt it click as they rounded a particularly steep turn. Subconscious memory came to life: they were near the barracks, which meant he’d been stored in one of the internal interrogation chambers while the drug wore off. 

Every year of his service he’d stood in one of those rooms, surrounded by black glass, and answered to the supervisors. He shouldn’t have expected this to be any different.

“We need you to train one of our Rookies,” Yakov said.

“A Rookie?” Victor asked.

“For the Tantafeur mission.”

Victor nearly stopped in his tracks. “How can you expect a year-old—”

“He’s already the best we have,” Yakov said.

Victor did stop then. “What?”

Yakov smirked. “Thought you’d hold your record forever, Vitya?”

“No,” Victor said. He just… hadn’t thought he’d lose it so soon.

Even the oppressive air of the Agency couldn’t conceal the sound of a gunshot. Victor’s ears pricked and pinky twitched, eyes scanning the anonymous concrete wall and endless rows of steel doors.

Yakov’s hand on a glossy pad slid the door open, and inside was a small room barely bigger than a closet. There was a wall of glass—but not black: a window into an enclosed shooting range with a young blond agent moving down the line, firing six shots at a time and reloading without so much as a blink. He aimed for the moving targets first, hitting center within four centimeters as they passed at 15 km/h.

His gun was plated in gold and striped like a tiger, ludicrously attention-grabbing for Agents who prided themselves in anonymity.

The Rookie emptied the last magazine of bullets and stopped at the far end of the range, the rise of his chest almost invisible, not a drop of sweat on his brow. He grabbed the band of his headphones, pulling them off, and flicked away his safety goggles. Even from a distance his light eyes were striking, green or blue it was hard to say, but they were proud, and determined, and angry.

The recordboard on the far wall shuffled, and the Rookie’s single white dot rose to the top.

The Rookie turned back to the glass, sat on the long table littered in empty magazines, and stuck both his middle fingers up at them in their hidden observation area, just the same as Victor had when he first awoke.

“See?” Yakov grumbled. “You’ll get along just fine.”

—

Yakov and Victor were walking side by side when the bell went off, shrill despite the heavy muting of the air. Like the inner workings of a watch, Agents and Rookies appeared from steel doors, interlacing as they advanced to their next training modules. Victor could tell the higher level Agents by their discretion; everyone was looking at him, but only the Rookies looked like they were looking at him.

“Damn if I ever thought I’d see you again,” came a familiar voice, and Victor twisted in time to see a flop of blond curls over stubbly facial hair and seductive green eyes.

“Giacometti,” Victor clasped hands, felt Chris’ chest against his own, even felt Chris’ fingertips dragging along the barrel of his gun. Victor just stared in disbelief. “I thought you were—”

“Almost,” Chris said. He lifted up his shirt, marked with a white heptagon, to reveal a gnarl of scar tissue stretching from his left nipple down to his hip. “Can’t let you be the only Phoenix, can I?”

Victor quashed the feeling coagulating around his lungs. Victor had barely survived Tantafeur, and Chris had always trailed behind him. Chris’ chances were one in a million. Victor couldn’t get attached. Instead, he clapped Chris on the shoulder. “I hope you fly.”

Chris must have felt the sudden distance. He blew a breath out, quirked his lips in a ghost of a smile. “Yeah,” he agreed, then continued down the hall, already emptying of its activity. Victor twisted to look at Yakov.

“He’s getting deployed in three days,” Yakov answered the unspoken question.

Victor didn’t bother nodding. Chris disappeared through an unmarked steel door.

He’d probably never see him again.

—

“Why not use the supervisors? They taught me, didn’t they?” Victor asked as they came to the mess hall.

“Eat first,” Yakov said, gesturing to the pad. Victor wished he wasn’t programmed to follow instructions immediately. He wanted to hesitate, or maybe spit on the black pad, but instead his hand splayed out on it, and a moment later the cafeteria window opened and a plate emerged.

“You took my weight while I was unconscious,” Victor realized as he looked at the plate. He’d gained just enough to cover his ribs when he left the Agency, and the bars on the plate reflected that. Before, in that other life, he’d received three and a quarter. Now it was three even. “And put me on a diet.”

“The Agency knows what you need,” Yakov said.

Victor snorted.

They sat at the end of a long table, most of its occupants eating quietly and efficiently. Those who spoke had the same detachment Victor used with Chris. Mostly. The Rookies still had their friendships and camaraderie, but the mark of an Agent was cool collaboration and acknowledgment, nothing more. After the first few friends failed to return from their missions, you reached a point where you couldn’t handle it anymore. If you didn’t make friends, they’d stop dying on you.

“So,” Victor said. “Why.” He picked up one of the bars, his stomach oddly eager. He wanted to be disgusted at the bland, near-flavorless mix of crunch and chew—vaguely chalky, like they’d never bothered to hide the vitamins and protein inside. It hit his tongue with a crystal clear punch of memory: thousands of days of bland meals, head down, gun on his hip, seeing targets in the white of the plate while his shoulder twitched sore from the kickback.

It took the wind out of him, remembering—feeling—that drive he’d had. 

“Supervisors haven’t seen what you’ve seen,” Yakov said.

Another snort escaped Victor. “No one should have to see the things I’ve seen; that’s the whole point of the program,” Victor said. Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice.

“He needs that,” Yakov said. “What you’ve seen. You’ll be his personal trainer.” Victor blinked. He’d never had a personal trainer. He’d had special sessions with several of the supervisors, but an entire asset dedicated just to him? It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t sustainable.

“Why?” Victor repeated. He looked up at the Director but something about his face was suddenly closed off, sealed like the steel doors and Victor didn’t have the access level to open it. Victor, like so many times before, had reached a dead end, his trail of information suddenly dry.

Victor pursed his lips and shook his head. “I’m not staying for more than a month,” Victor declared.

Yakov rolled his shoulders. “Fine.”

He gave in way too easily. It didn’t sound fine.

“Fine,” Victor agreed.

—

Absolute time didn’t exist in the Agency, only the pace of the bell and the intervals between. Six had passed before Victor and Yakov went to the range. Victor’s whole arm itched for the recoil of his gun. Just like with the Rookie, magazines sat out along the counter that stretched the width of the range.

“Who’s watching?” Victor asked, finger circling the exposed tip of one bullet. His eyes drifted to the black glass, far more used to being on this side of it than the strange perspective he’d had that morning—or whenever it was he’d awoken from his drug-induced sleep.

Yakov turned and made a swift gesture with his hand.

The observation room lit up, black glass suddenly transparent, filled with supervisors and seventh-year agents, white heptagons blazing on simple black shirts. Victor wanted to say ‘I haven’t shot in three years’ but there weren’t any excuses here, and besides, he’d shot every night in his dreams.

Victor took out his gun, pointing it at the glass, moving it slowly from heart to heart to watch the way their eyes flickered, their hands twitched.

Then he turned on instinct and memory, target positions burned into his brain from the split-second glance he’d taken when they walked into the room.

Empty magazine. Reload. Empty. Reload. Empty.

He walked without moving his upper body, everything isolated below his waist. He didn’t even see the targets, he just let muscle memory take over. Thirty seconds later he stood at the far end of the counter, gun smoking, ears ringing.

He’d been breathing the whole time, body compensating for the sinusoidal motion of his chest without effort.

Victor’s shoulder didn’t ache. It sang.

The Rookie’s single dot icon topped a slew of heptagon and hexagon records on the board. Points came from speed, accuracy, and quantity. Victor waited, breathing easy.

The board shuffled, and a Phoenix appeared on top.

—

“I’m not staying in the supervisors’ quarters,” Victor said as Yakov pressed his palm to another pad, opening yet another nameless steel door.

“You’re a Phoenix, not an Agent,” Yakov said.

“And not a Supervisor,” Victor shot. “You said yourself I’ve seen more than any of them. Put me with the Agents.”

Through the door was the first glimpse of color Victor had seen since he arrived: streaks of marbled blue in the tiles leading towards the supervisor’s showers. In the midst of black and grey, it looked nearly neon. Victor stood on the other side of the door, peeling his eyes away as the steel slid shut again.

“You won’t like it,” Yakov said.

Victor knew what that meant. “Who’s in my bunk?” He asked.

“Guess.”

—

Yakov left Victor at the door to the barracks, and by the time Victor put his palm on the pad it had already been programmed to open for him. Victor felt like a stranger walking the path of a ghost; halls he’d tread thousands of time now felt so distant: another life, another person.

Victor took off his shirt, its white phoenix marking him apart from every other occupant. He bundled it and tucked it into his waistband opposite his gun.

The bunks were embedded in the wall, three high, with simple mattresses and heather gray sheets that looked like concrete-turned-cloth. Victor found his bunk easily: far in the corner of one cube. Top bunk, obviously, able to watch everyone else in the room. It was empty. Victor stripped down to black briefs before climbing in and pulling the curtain closed. There were no personal effects, just a place to store his gun and a simple touch light.

Victor traced the ceiling until he found where he’d scratched his name into the concrete. There was a bullet hole straight through the center.

“The fuck are you doing in my bunk?”

Steel screeched against steel as someone yanked the curtain aside, letting fluorescent light stream in again, illuminating Victor’s scarred body and bullet-marred name.

“My bunk,” Victor corrected.

Up close, the Rookie’s eyes burned green, his lips a pale pink whose softness did nothing to diminish his snarl. He was naked but for a towel, hair still darkened from dampness.

“Get out,” the Rookie said.

“No.” Calm, uncaring. Victor looked at him, then reached for the gun safe and slid it open. The gold-plated pistol was there, even more ridiculous up close.

“Don’t you dare—”

But Victor’s hand was already sliding into place. It didn’t feel like his gun. It didn’t fit like his gun. Victor pulled it in front of him, studying the tiger stripe effect, the broad muzzle, the heavily ridged slide. He could feel the Rookie combusting beside him.

“It’s thick,” Victor commented, eyes on Yuri as his hand explored. “Good girth. Heavy in the hand.” 

“Give. Me. My. Gun,” the Rookie said, each word burning like acid, hissing and sizzling against the Rookie’s teeth.

Victor held out the gun, grip first.

“You like gold, hmm?” Victor asked. 

“Fuck you.”

Victor hadn’t laughed in... How long? But the Rookie’s fire made him chuckle. “I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

He was relaxed enough he didn’t stop the kick that landed against his ribs. How the fuck had the Rookie’s leg even reached that high? Victor found himself curling to the side, and the next moment he wasn’t alone in the bunk. The rookie clamored atop of him, trying to shove him out, but Victor reached to the ceiling and braced.

“Get the fuck out!” the Rookie yelled.

Other agents stirred in their bunks at the commotion, sitting up, pulling back curtains, coming in from the showers. Victor grappled with the Rookie; he was small, but every kilo was muscle.

“Fuck him up, Yuri!” Someone called.

Victor got his arm around Yuri’s neck. “Is that your name?” Victor whispered. “Yuri?”

“Fuck you!”

“Do you know my name?” Victor asked.

Yuri somehow went liquid, like a cat, slipping from his grip, and the next instant Victor was pinned down, Yuri’s hands on his shoulders, the blond naked above him. Victor looked up, snickering, as they both took a moment to breathe.

“Your name,” Yuri echoed.

“Do you know my name?”

“No one gives a shit about your name, old man; you’re dead like the rest of us,” Yuri cursed him. He sized Victor up, making sure he felt it: “Probably won’t even survive your first mission. Cruel of them to recruit balding fucks like you.”

Victor found himself grinning. “You know my name.” Suddenly Victor pushed up, slamming Yuri’s back to the concrete, holding him forced against it.

“Some—fucking grapple—” Yuri exerted through his compressed lungs. There was no point in resisting it. Victor was just wasting his own energy.

But at the end, when Victor let go, he pulled out his gun and held it behind Yuri, letting him look at the reflection in the tall, polished side panel. Imprinted across Yuri’s back, in white relief against irritated pink, was Victor’s name, visible even despite the close-range bullet hole Yuri had fired to try and eradicate it.

Yuri’s nostrils flared in disgust, but he didn’t move.

“Like I said,” Victor mused, tucking his own gun into the safe. “My bunk.”

—

Hours later—Victor knew only because he felt better rested—he awoke to the sharp ring of steel on steel as Yuri once again ripped open the curtain. Rows of faint lights rimmed the room, illuminating the Rookie’s infuriated stare. Night time. 

“Get your gun,” Yuri cursed.

Victor closed his eyes, yawned, and blinked to find the violent visage still there. “Why?” Victor asked. He could smell the faint tang from a recently fired gun. Yuri’s, surely. That meant he went to the range. He’d seen Victor’s record.

“Bullshit you can get a score like that three year’s dead,” Yuri said. Dead. Free. It was all true, depending on your view.

Victor shrugged, “board doesn’t lie.” He tapped Yuri’s nose, only to feel the sharp sting of Yuri’s nails digging between the tendons of his wrist.

“Prove it.”

In the middle of the night, or whatever passed for it at the Agency, the halls were sparse of people. Victor walked without his shirt and caught Yuri’s sneer at the thin coating of fat he’d acquired. Targets stood waiting in the range, magazines strewn across the counter just like always, each at a different angle, distance, but all the same, able to tuck into any Agency gun without hitch.

Yuri’s name still sat under Victor’s, but the score had gone up. The Rookie leaned back against the wall, arms crossed, and blew the shock of hair in front of his face to the side, waiting.

“You show up just to take your record back?” Yuri asked.

Victor grabbed the safety headphones and pulled them on, fondling his gun—not even feigning inspection, just running the pads of his fingertips along familiar indentations and metallic ridges.

“Showed up because they asked me to train you,” Victor said. Yuri’s face twisted again into disbelief and fury, but Victor just turned his back on the Rookie and took his first shot. 

—

Yuri stormed out before Victor finished, knowing Victor’s score would top the board even after the first few shots. Victor expected to find him in the bunk when he returned, but the hollow was empty. Yuri was nowhere to be found.

Victor spent the next few days on the other side of the glass, watching. He watched Yuri in the gym, on the track, in his language and linguistics courses. He watched him in chemical sciences, in practical engineering, in diplomacy and psychology. Regardless of the block, Yuri’s performance was always exceptional—not perfect, but exceptional—especially for a first year Rookie. His peers were sixth and seventh years, and Yuri held his own with room to spare, but something was still off. 

Everything Victor watched felt eerily familiar: like looking through a window in time. Same determination. Same unwavering dedication. Same bloated, dangerous ego. The other Rookies in the mess hall didn’t approach Yuri. The higher years turned away from him. Everyone hid their intimidation under various layers of disdain.

Victor took his tray of nutrition bars and sat across from Yuri, the only two people at the far end of an empty table.

“Fuck you,” Yuri cursed beneath his breath, not bothering to look up.

This was one of the only places he and Yuri differed. Where Yuri chose anger, Victor had opted for charm.

“They monitor that, too, you know,” Victor smirked as he chewed through the blandness of his chalk bar.

“No.” Yuri’s nostrils curled: “I wouldn’t.”

—

Yuri hadn’t said anything more to Victor since the mess hall. Victor waited for him outside a steel door, that frown still on his face, but Yuri just glared and strode past him. Before, Victor had let him go. Today, Victor followed him through.

Cryptography rooms were single person cells with a chair, desk, and microphone. Victor leaned in the corner as the prompts began.

“22B. Assignment to new partner. Call: Konnen Sie mir helfen? Response:”

“Wollen Sie zwei Zwiebeln oder drei?” Yuri said.

“22C. Partner compromised. Call: Um wievel Uhr öffnet das Kino? Response:”

“Mein Telefon ist kaputt,” Yuri replied.

“22D. Partner under surveillance. Call: Kennen Sie diese Adresse? Response:”

Victor flicked to attention as Yuri hesitated. He’d been repeating them in his head in the same steady, casual tone as Yuri. The response waited in Victor’s throat: automatic, ready.

“Response,” the speakers echoed.

“Lincoln’s address; he was shot in a theatre,” Victor whispered, and Yuri twitched.

“Ist das am Theater?” Yuri clipped.

“22E. Return with partner to safe house—”

—

Victor’s second week was spent alternating between observation behind the glass and within the blocks themselves. Never reliable. Never predictable. Always a surprise. 

Agents weren’t supposed to rely on anyone. That’s what they taught. But that was Yuri’s problem. He was hot-headed, he pushed himself too far, he had impulsive bursts of emotion. But more than anything else: Yuri was alone. When it came to Tantafeur, he would fail. 

Most of the blocks happened in rooms small enough that they could smell each other: sweat from the gymnasium or shampoo from the showers. It infuriated Yuri, even if they didn’t talk. Especially if they didn’t talk. Yuri still sneered, still fought to prove himself, even more so if Victor stepped in to help. 

“This isn’t fucking training,” Yuri exploded one day, but Victor just tilted his head and rested his hand on his gun. 

He showed up more frequently then, until it was every block, down to Yuri’s monthly medical exam, where he stripped himself naked to be hooked into a mess of masks and monitors and EKG nodes. Yuri ran on a treadmill, glaring at Victor through each of the twenty kilometers, until the doctor cleared him and Yuri nearly spit in Victor’s face. 

Victor invaded Yuri’s spaces in the most intimate way: becoming a sudden, unexpected constant. 

—

“Stop wasting time.” Yakov’s normally displeased features had a reddish hue from frustration. They met outside the barracks, Yuri showering for the evening, Victor leaving him alone for the night.

“You said I had to train him, not how,” Victor pointed out as they walked the corridors. 

“He’s running out of time,” Yakov said simply.

“When?”

Yakov stopped in front of one of the doors, but he didn’t place his palm on the reader just yet. His lips pursed. “There’s a rendez-vous next week at Tantafeur. We need an interceptor.”

Next week. It wasn’t enough time. Victor frowned. “…does he know?”

“No.”

—

“Bet you always got perfect scores on your exams, didn’t you?” Yuri spat. Victor had helped him the previous block. Diplomacy. Victor had never been particularly good at diplomacy, but Yuri, apparently, was worse. “Always followed instructions, always did what you were told.” The sneer in Yuri’s voice wiggled between Victor’s ribs.

Victor grabbed Yuri’s shoulder, pulling him to a stop in the buzzing hall. “They called me back to train you because I survived,” he said. “If instructions were all you needed, everyone would survive.”

Yuri’s mouth set in a skeptical knot. “So what? So you’re not like these other idiots with a death-wish and beneficiaries?”

“… Is that why you’re here?”

More silence, a tighter knot. “I’m not going to die.”

Something about Yuri saying it sliced through Victor. He’d slept in Yuri’s bunk, watched him for weeks, saw and felt everything Yuri did. A realization washed ice cold down Victor’s spine: He’d been getting attached without even realizing it, because -- Victor swallowed -- he’d been just as alone, on the other side.

Victor tensed, turned away.

“There it is,” Yuri said, letting out a bitter, resigned laugh. “That good old Agent attitude.” He crossed his arms over his chest, looking at the floor, and his tone shifted, softened. “You could at least pretend. If you’re supposed to be training me, you know,” Yuri whispered.

“What?” Victor asked.

“That you think I’ll make it.”

It hurt worst because Victor wanted it. He wanted it to be true. He desperately, hopelessly, breathlessly wanted it to be true. All of this sensation had snuck upon him while he feigned being a supervisor, watching and hoping and latching onto this Rookie who was going into the den of hell and all Victor wanted — when was the last time Victor wanted anything? — was for Yuri to live.

Instead of letting Yuri go to his next block, Victor pulled him to the range.

“Prove it,” Victor said.

—

They both watched Yuri’s score rise up the record board, only to stall just beneath Victor’s, a fraction of a point away. Yuri quaked, his knuckles going white around his gun.

“It doesn’t matter,” he dismissed. “I’ll beat your score.” He ejected the empty magazine and filled it anew, his voice elevated. “I’ll outshoot you. I’ll outpace you. When the time comes, I’m going to make it through. I’m the best this place has. I’m not going to wind up dead in some radical compound with no name and no past and no future and no—” Yuri’s voice reached screaming volume and abruptly cut off, like a bubble of air had caught in his throat. His chest rose and fell like it hadn’t when he was firing his gun. His cheeks bloomed pink, like roses, eyes the glassy green of broken bottles.

Victor came alongside the quivering Rookie, cutting himself on those eyes, voice little more than a whisper: “You.” Victor tried to swallow down the tension in his throat. “You think it’s all about you. You think all that matters is what you can do, how far you can push yourself, how well you can fire your gun.”

Victor’s breath vibrated one of Yuri’s golden flyaway hairs. Yuri looked to the side, but didn’t move. He stayed close enough that the top of his gun, held loose at his side, brushed Victor’s thigh.

“That’s what I have,” Yuri whispered. “My brain. My body. My gun.”

Instead of denying it, instead of shaking his head, Victor put his hand on Yuri’s gun wrist, tendons pulsing in response. “That’s not enough.”

Their breathing came in unison, stuttering inhales and exhales. Yuri’s question hung in the air, unspoken, but his desperation for an answer filled the room. He looked up, finally, into Victor’s eyes. 

Without a word, Victor stepped back, and Yuri winced like he’d been slapped, that separation unbearable, until he realized Victor was lowering himself to his knees. Yuri’s eyes went wide, fear of rejection replaced with breathless intrigue.

Victor focused on the golden gun, using his grip on Yuri’s wrist to guide the tip to his mouth.

Chemical residue seared Victor’s tongue as he took the striped barrel between his lips, teeth sliding over the polished pattern. He let the muzzle settle in his mouth, cradled on his tongue, lips resting blanket-like over the metal. His eyes rose to Yuri’s.

One pull of the trigger. That’s all it would take.

This isn’t about you.

Yuri’s face shifted rapidly: surprise, horror, disgust, and then something else—something like fear and alarm that made Yuri’s breath hitch. That made his body twitch.

Victor took the barrel deeper, holding Yuri’s wrist in place, until he could feel the shot-warmed metal hit the back of his throat. His body tensed on reflex, nearly choking, but Victor held himself on the gun, held the gun at the edge of his throat. He waited until the urge faded, and only then pulled off.

A thin strand of spittle connected the forward sight to Victor’s lower lip.

Victor flicked his tongue out to catch it, break it. He wet his lips. Now he was panting too, and why? He let go of Yuri’s wrist.

The gold of Yuri’s gun caught the light, but Yuri didn’t bring it back to his side. A second passed, then another, and then Yuri held his gun up to Victor’s lips. Victor quivered like Yuri had after his score teetered on the edge. Victor wet his lips, eyes fluttering up to Yuri’s, and then slowly opened his mouth so Yuri could put his gun it in. 

Yuri pushed until the barrel rested on Victor’s tongue again, letting the weight dimple the muscle downward. Victor curled it around one edge, letting Yuri see his dexterity, then went pliant again as Yuri pushed deeper. 

Victor choked around the acrid barrel, the gold shoved down his throat, but he didn’t pull back, and Yuri didn’t pull back, even as Victor’s eyes watered and the ring of his nostril dampened and dripped. Victor couldn’t breathe, but he got his reflex under control and calmed, kneeling there in front of Yuri, body still clenching for air around the barrel of Yuri’s gun.

Yuri’s free hand came to Victor’s jaw, fingers slipping into the softness underneath until they found the hard ridge through Victor’s throat. He brushed his thumb back and forth over that bump, swirling the pad over protruding flesh.

He withdrew his gun just enough for Victor to breathe.

Getting air around the barrel proved difficult. It tasted sharp and chemical, but Victor stayed in place, even rolled his tongue along the golden tiger stripes, like cleaning the rookie’s metallic companion. Yuri watched intently, the same laser focus as any of his activities. His free hand smoothed up the line of Victor’s jaw to tangle in his hair.

When Victor moaned, Yuri thrust his gun into Victor’s mouth again.

Pink lips stretched white around it and sealed with suction, eyes closing, throat bobbing. Swallowing around the tiger-pattern gun felt just as gratifying as anything else Victor had taken in his throat at the Agency, but this rang with significance. Yuri was too well-trained for the tremble in his abs to carry down his shooting arm, but Victor could see the tell-tale signs regardless. Saliva pooled in Victor’s mouth, saturated with the tang of metal, and he didn’t care that it threatened to drip down. Victor could only focus on Yuri: the wince on Yuri’s face, the clench of his muscles. He could stare forever at this Rookie-ghost of his past self, unaware he was about to face his ultimate challenge.

Death was an inevitability. The Agency succeeded in its goals specifically because people with nothing to lose were willing to do what others weren’t.

But Victor didn’t want Yuri to die.

He had to give Yuri something to lose.

Whatever Yuri saw in Victor’s eyes, he shuddered, body quaking for a split second before he gasped and ripped his gun from Victor’s mouth, cutting the roof. Without a word, Yuri ran from the room, steel door shushing out of the way and back into place.

Victor braced his hands on the floor, the metallic taste of the gun replaced with ferric blood. He spat red onto the concrete, watching crimson swirl amongst clear. He could still hear the steel door echoing inside his skull.

Wiping the back of his hand against his mouth, Victor glanced to the black glass, wondering just who was watching. What Yakov would think. Feel. 

Victor felt alive.

—

That night, when Victor showed up to the bunk, Yuri was resting on the mattress, fingers tracing the bullet-pocked carving of Victor’s name.

“…. What’re you doing in my bunk?” Victor asked.

Yuri didn’t look at him.

Victor tried another tactic: “Where have you been sleeping all this time?”

“Who were they?” Yuri said instead. Victor felt his heart grind to a stop.

“What?”

“Your lesson,” Yuri said. “… If I want to survive, I need a reason to live.” Yuri’s mouth screwed up: “Someone to live for. So… who were they? Your person… your reason…”

Victor grabbed the curtain rod above the bunk, letting his weight sink forward. The dorm was alive with shuffling and talking and readying for bed; it was as private as it could be, given the circumstances.

“Did you find another room?” Victor asked. “You said you didn’t sleep with —“

“Other Agents?” Yuri snorted. “No. …but you did. Was he one of them?” The gears turned in Yuri’s head, leaping along the line of logic: “But… there’s only ever been one Phoenix. … He died after you got out?”

Victor’s mouth twitched. “He died three years before I got out, and I never knew, because I was here.”

Yuri inhaled slowly, exhaled. “Okay,” Yuri said, rolling out of the bunk. He hopped down in front of Victor, gun holstered at his hip. “Come on.”

—

“What is it?” Victor asked when they’d traversed winding corridors for nearly ten minutes. Yuri didn’t answer, just put his hand on the pad. Steel swooshed open to reveal a small room: unique in that it lacked any glass at all. There was a stack of colored sheets and plush mattresses—full size, for Supervisor rooms. One had been pulled from the stack and laid on the floor, covered in rumpled green sheets as bright as Yuri’s eyes.

“… How’d you get access to this?” Victor asked. If this was where Yuri had been sleeping, Victor had gotten the short end of the stick.

Yuri shrugged. “I just kept putting my hand on pads.” Without looking at Victor, he kicked off his shoes, then grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head. His fingers hooked in the waist of his pants, considering, but instead he turned his attention to his gun, withdrawing it from its harness and flipping it once around his finger.

“So…” Yuri said, snaring Victor’s attention. “You gonna get on your knees again?”

Victor managed a smirk. “I can still taste blood from when you ripped your gun out.”

“Not my gun this time.”

Yuri didn’t say another word, just jutted his chin up like he wasn’t backing down. The muzzle of his gun tapped against his thigh, brushing back and forth over the side-seam of Yuri’s pants. Victor could have been all bravado and callous smirks and empty, seductive charm, but that didn’t feel right—not tonight. Victor saw two layers of Yuri, clear as day: this posturing and cockiness and underneath it an encrusted shell cracking open to reveal a tender, virginal young man exposing himself for the first time. 

Vulnerability was the hardest skill to learn as an Agent, but in the end, it was the only one that kept you alive.

The taste was far different: salt instead of iron, musk instead of chemical. Victor hugged an arm around Yuri’s waist as he swallowed, letting the ridges of his throat work Yuri’s body. His fingers slid up Yuri’s back, holding the Rookie against him, while Yuri’s fingers, gun and all, tangled in Victor’s hair in return. Yuri’s back hit the stack of mattresses, leaning against it and making strangled noises as Victor forced his body to break, and give, and release.

Yuri knocked his head against the springy things, eyes closed, wincing, panting. A mess of limbs and sweat later, they were on the mattress together, clothes discarded. Yuri’s hand pulled tight in Victor’s hair; Yuri’s fingers wrapped around his gun, pulling on it, bringing it to his lips where he tongued the golden rim, everything slick and wet. Fingers pushed into Victor’s mouth, throat, then touched him like Yuri must have touched himself, small stolen strokes intended to stay silent in the bunks. Victor gave in, rose, met Yuri for everything he offered.

They took turns thrusting into clenched thighs, making a mess they never intended to clean up.

“You can hold onto me,” Victor whispered, after, as they lied together in a loose embrace, green sheets cascading across their body. “I’m safe. I already survived.”

Yuri’s breath tickled warm and slow against Victor’s throat. Even if he survived Tantafeur, he had six more years after before he’d earned his freedom. “Will you wait for me?” Yuri asked.

“I already am.”

—

Some nights, Victor stared out the one-way windows of his apartment and felt utterly lost. What if he’d died—The Rookie, Yuri, whose last name Victor didn’t even know. What if, days after Victor left, he’d been shot dead in Tantafeur? But Victor refused to give in to that despair. Time passed. Months passed. Years passed and Victor waited for the day that a blonde man with glass-green eyes would find him.

Crossing the chipping white lines of the grocery store parking lot, Victor kept his hand in his long coat pocket, hiding from the morning chill in his upturned collar. His pinky twitched against his gun on instinct as someone called out behind him.

“Sir! Sir, you dropped this!”

Six years ago, Victor’s heart had dropped into his stomach when he heard those words. Now, twisting towards that familiar voice, knowing who he would see: it soared.


End file.
